[Rodney]

I wouldn't necessarily agree that you should "buy" three quality links to build your ranking in Google. I also wouldn't suggest going on a link exchanging spree just to build your ranking.

I think Google requires 200 inpound links to your site before they will even look at you.

This is not true at all.

You can get listed in Google with ZERO inbound links. It helps to have sites linking to you (helps you get crawled faster and more often), but you definitely don't need 200 for Google to look at you.

One of Google's engineers said last week that the best links to your site are "earned", not bought, traded or exchanged. To me that means you should link out (and in) "naturally". Find sites that you truly like or that you truly think would be a resource for people visiting your site and link out to them. If they link back to you, great, if not, you are still helping your visitor.

I went to the internet marketing convention PubCon last week and one of the themes that I heard over and over from the search engine reps and seasoned SEO and marketers were to build sites and work to make your site friendly and useful for your USER, not the search engines. If you do that well, your search engine rankings will follow with time. That means if you create a unique site that has useful information or presents the information well (even with a shopping site), you'll get more people linking to you naturally in their blogs or in forums or on their websites.

 

[Rodney]

Rondey,



I'm going to risk pissing off the puppet master and call BS on this one

Let's stick to discussing the topic and not the person posting (that includes name calling )

I noticed that you're in the yahoo directory for T-shirt Coutdown. You probably were listed in there before they started charging $300 - Lucky you.

Actually, I paid for the listing at Yahoo. I also recommend it to those with the budget for it because you can get targeted, relevant traffic from Yahoo. The PR boost is minimal in my opinion.

I'm assuming you agree with me in that this is a high quality link that has secured you backlinks

Nope, the quality of my content secures me backlinks. Yahoo drives traffic so that more people see my content.

slightly improved your PR

Possibly, but so slight that I wouldn't "buy the link" just for the PR.

added direct traffic to your site, etc. etc.

Yes it has added traffic to my site.

However, new websites will never get this link without paying. While personal truths are not necessarily valid for everyone....all I can say is that this "paid link" has secured our website numerous non-reciprocal backlicks (which is what google is supposedly prioritizing now) and was WELL worth the $299.

You are correct, what works for one website certainly doesn't hold true for the next. But you didn't mention "YAHOO" in your "buy paid links" statement above. To me, "Buy paid links" means to find some site selling links (relevant or not) in order to manipulate your PR.

I guess I misunderstood your statement.

If you're saying you should consider paying to be listed in the Yahoo directory, then I can agree with that.

(generally speaking) New sites that are looking to build traffic quickly will have to allocate some significant resources (time and/or money) to a link building / SEO campaign. A paid link into Yahoo directory and other select paid links should certainly be a component of such seo efforts.

I can agree about the Yahoo directory, but not for any "link building" reason.

Again, this is my opinion based on what I've read and heard.

But I would only buy any type of advertising if the site offering it reached my target market. Whether that be a link in the Yahoo directory or a banner ad on a t-shirt site, that's the way I would consider if it was worthwhile.

Buying a link just for the PR boost seems like a backwards way of looking at things and I don't think it's good way to build long term traffic from the search engines.

 

[Rodney]

So how much attention should you devote to SEO?

Well, to me, SEO starts from before you even design the first webpage. It goes into site layout, navigation, topic, html page from the top down, making sure the site is PEOPLE friendly and reads well to humans. Making sure the site is useful and adds some value for the user.

From there, 90% of your SEO is done in my opinion. After that, you just go into normal marketing mode trying to find good ways to drive quality traffic to your site. That could be Yahoo, dmoz, any of the various t-shirt directory/promotional sites. If you sell political t-shirts, you could try advertising on political blogs (maybe through blogads). If you sell dog t-shirts, you could try sponsoring a small to mid sized site that talked about dog grooming tips. Seeing if that dog site has an opt in newsletter to advertise in. Offline advertising, etc.